Deputy PM Announces £150m Investment to Transform Treatment for Eating Disorders

03 Dec 2014 --- The British deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has announced plans to invest £150m in the treatment of eating disorders. The new investment will radically reform the treatment of children and young people with eating disorders and pave the way for new waiting time standards.

The investment, which will be rolled out over 5 years and has been secured by the Deputy Prime Minister in this year’s Autumn Statement, is part of an ongoing campaign by the government to bring mental health services on a par with physical care.

It comes just a month after research revealed that an increasing number of young people, from as young as 5, are being admitted to hospital for treatment of eating disorders with those aged 14 to 25 most likely to be affected.

The announcement will focus on channelling money from expensive institutional care to local provision and act as a base for the development of waiting time and access standards for eating disorders for 2016 by: supporting schemes to get young people with eating disorders and self-harm early access to services in their communities with properly trained teams, making hospital admission a last resort; and extending access to talking therapies so that children and young people have a choice of evidence-based therapies, a treatment plan agreed with their therapist and monitored and recorded outcomes.

This will deliver: swifter access to evidence based community treatment, fewer transfers to adult services – reducing up to approximately 70% of those who need to be treated as adults, an end to the current cliff edge of transition for young people with eating disorders when they turn 18, a more standardised level of provision for children, young people and their families.

The Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said: “Too often children with mental health problems are being completely let down, with many suffering from eating disorders that go unreported and untreated.

“We know that if an eating disorder goes untreated for more than 3 to 5 years the chances of recovery are greatly reduced, while incidents of self-harm increase.

“That’s why we need to act now to transform the current system, intervening earlier with dedicated and targeted community-based services to ensure that we don’t fail this generation or the next.”

The Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Taskforce is already undertaking a focused programme of work which will result in recommendations across the spectrum of child and adolescent mental health services. They will report in spring 2015. These proposals take into account their likely recommendations.

Care and Support Minister, Norman Lamb, said: “I want to build a fairer society and that’s why I’m determined to make sure children and young people get the best possible mental health care. That’s why I convened a taskforce of experts to focus on improving services. Better care for eating disorders is a top priority and this investment will help drive up standards so that no child is left without support.”

Sarah Brennan, Chief Executive of Young Minds said: “It is great news indeed to hear that areas of support for children and young people’s mental health will receive additional, desperately needed, resources. Too often children and young people’s services are overlooked in preference for adult services. Young people make up 20% of the population, yet receive a fraction of the resources available with the terrible consequences we hear about daily in the news.”

Eating disorder charity Beat, also welcomed the news. Beat’s Chief Executive, Susan Ringwood, commented: “In this, our 25th Anniversary Year, we have been campaigning for no more preventable deaths from eating disorders. This funding for treatment will help make that call to action a reality. Now, the Government must ensure that all GPs are up to date and up to speed on diagnosing eating disorders, so that young people can get referred as quickly as possible for this treatment. It will save lives.”